BAR HARBOR, Maine — The Jackson Laboratory will receive $15 million over the next five years as part of an effort to find an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.
“Today’s announcement holds tremendous promise in the fight against Alzheimer’s and is truly a credit to the skilled scientists of The Jackson Laboratory, who are global leaders in biomedical research,” U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, co-chair of the Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer’s, said in a news release. “I am delighted that this exciting research will be conducted in Maine.”
The Bar Harbor research facility will lead the Alzheimer’s Disease Precision Models Center in conjunction with Indiana University School of Medicine. The Indiana university will receive $10 million.
Jackson Lab will use mice in its studies aimed at generating and studying new models and creating a preclinical testing pipeline. The Alzheimer’s Disease Precision Models Center will help to accelerate the process through which Alzheimer’s therapies can be tested in clinical trials and eventually lead to treatments for humans.
“To date, success rates in clinical trials of AD drugs after testing in animal models have been disappointing,” Dr. Gareth Howell of Jackson Lab stated in a news release from the lab. Howell and Dr. Greg Carter will be leading the effort at the Bar Harbor facility.
Three additional jobs are expected to be created at Jackson Lab for the research.
Alzheimer’s is an age-related neurodegenerative disease and is the leading cause of dementia among people age 65 and older. An estimated 5 million Americans have the disease, 37,000 in Maine, and it ranks among the top six causes of death.
The senior senator from Maine said working to increase federal funding to fight Alzheimer’s has long been one of her top priorities. The number of people with the disease is soaring, which has dire implications for the federal budget, Collins said. The U.S. spends more than $236 billion per year on care for those with Alzheimer’s, including $160 billion in costs to Medicare and Medicaid, which makes it the nation’s costliest disease, according to the senator’s news release.
The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution based in Bar Harbor, with a National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center facility in Sacramento, California, and a genomic medicine institute in Farmington, Connecticut. The Jackson Lab employs 1,800 people.